Posted on 02/13/2012 10:35:42 AM PST by MichCapCon
Debbie Squires of the Michigan Elementary and Middle School Principals Association speaks to the House Education Committee.
"Educators go through education for a reason. They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That is not necessarily true about an individual resident. Not saying that they don't want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint."
(Excerpt) Read more at michigancapitolconfidential.com ...
Debbie can bite me... signed, A Homeschooler.
“Educators go through education for a reason. They are the people who know best about how to serve children...”
Debby is an ignorant sl...er...”educator”.
Of course, “ignorant educator” is an oxymoron.
There is no more worthless degree than one in “education”.
My wife and daughter are both bachelor and masters in ed and I think you're full of baloney.
Gasp, I have performed a massive bad.
I said, “Of course, ‘ignorant educator’ is an oxymoron.”
“Ignorant educator” is a redundency.
“Intelligent liberal” is an oxymoron.
Yep. That’s why our local public school didn’t want to do anything to help my daughter with special needs learn to read. They just wanted to give her accommodations and dumb down her expectations.
They didn’t even test her for dyslexia or auditory processing disorder.
I knew to get her tested. When she was found to have problems, I found the correct reading program for her at a private school. Now at 15, she had a 4.0 her first semester of high school in regular classes and she loves to read. In fact, if her grades drop, a lot of the time it’s because she spends too much time reading for pleasure.
It eventually came down to a meeting where they wanted to continue to promote her grade wise (with a 30% F in math), and I refused. I actually had one of their math teachers tell me that they knew what was best for their child and that I should not challenge them because he had been to college to teach elementary math. Thank God my wife was there to restrain me.
I put my child into a private christian school the next week. My daughter graduates HS next years and is making a solid 90 to 95 percent in her pre-calculus class and is maintaining a 3.5 overall. It took us holding her back one year and retraining her for two years to forget the crap they taught her and retrain her with Saxon math.
This kind of institutional arrogance is what Mrs WBill and I saw when we were considering homeschooling.
Depends on what they do.
If they are classroom teachers, the time would be better spent on more CONTENT SPECIFIC hours (math, science, etc.) rather than education courses.
Education courses focus on classroom management rather than
content.
Way back when, I only needed 12 hours of educ. courses and student teaching to get certified.
That number has gone up to the detriment of teachers actually better knowing their subjects by focusing on content hours. (IMO)
The same type of mentality you get with this - "I am the only one in this room professional enough to carry the Glock 40" - at some point, said educator will wind up with a metaphorically similar result.
Where not able to full-time homeschool because of our careers, but we have decided to pull out 4th grader out of the public school and send him to a highly credited Christian School in our area. It will cost $500 a month and I will have to make some sacrifices, but we are through with public schools. His education is worth it. His grades keep getting lower and lower, and are now in the “below standards” range on key subjects, yet they just keep passing him along. No more. We’re meeting with his teacher tonight and will slam the hammer down.
I know what you mean anot Everyday Mathmatics. My son (also with Aspergers) could not grasp it. But the really ugly thing is, my wife and I also struggled helping him on his 2nd and 3rd grade math homework. The algorithms were foriegn to us. This year (4th grade) they did drop Everyday because of parents complaints, but because he learned nothing the last two years, we are playing catch-up.
Math Education: An Inconvenient Truth
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tr1qee-bTZI
Hopefully he will have the same success story as your daughter.
Number 41 on the list of communist goals for America.
41) Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.
Perhaps you can share their higher education education apologetics with us instead of your argumentum ad hominem.
I am glad that your school was willing to drop the Everyday Math. My daughter’s school was not. I was told point blank that they had spent over a million dollars on the corriculum and were not going to abandon it for just one chiled.
There is hope. If you can, get a Saxon Math book off the internet that is appropriate to your child’s understanding of Math. Perhaps 2nd grade ... whatever. Start with that and put in 30 min extra per day. Yes, I know the tears and the frustration for doing “extra” homework. We used bribes to get my daughter through it. Complete X problems / pages and you will have earned the right to do something that they like.
At first, I had to stay with her. I used a teaching method from the Boy Scouts called EDGE (Explain, demonstrate, guided, enable). First I would teach the technique and explain it. Often I would use symbols like triagles and squares to make the point. Then I would demonstrate on one of her problems. I had to teach her how to recognize a type of problem. Then guide her through doing a problem. Once she could talk and walk me through the problem, I would then let her do one on her own.
The key point was to show her at the end of the problems how I went back through and looked for her to proof read her own problems. I showed her step by step where she would make errors and how to correct them next time. Later as she became more skilled, I could simply identify which problems were incorrect and she would then go back and find her own mistakes. She was then required to show me her mistakes and how to do it properly.
Lots of time from me ... lots of tears from her. But it pays off now. She is now understanding (still not liking) math and only occationally comes to me for help.
Nothing substitutes for liberty and freedom. That is especially true in education. I don’t know how many young Freepers with small children there are, but please take this advice. Take charge of educating your children via private or homeschool, no matter the cost. The freedom and liberty you feel when they are finished with school is immeasurable in my opinion.
“Educators go through education for a reason. They are the people who know best about how to serve children. That is not necessarily true about an individual resident. Not saying that they don’t want the best for their children, but they may not know what actually is best from an education standpoint.”
Considering how many parents STILL think that public schools will educate their kids, she may just have a point.
“Their arrogance is unbelievable. My child was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome and simply was not able to absorb the form of math teaching that they were offering called Everyday Math.”
I think that the others answered it already, but you don’t need Aspergers to not be able to learn from Everyday Math, you only need to be exposed to Everyday Math. It is a complete DISASTER.
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